How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now

Well, our synapses are constantly changing, throughout our lives, and these changes reflect what we learn.

The ideal scenario is to offer the guidance of a structured pedagogy while encouraging children’s creativity by letting them know that there are still a thousand things to discover.

you are much slower when the numbers are close, like five and six, than when they are further apart, like five and nine, and you also make more errors. This distance effect32 is

What is the most effective time interval between two repetitions of the same lesson? A strong improvement is observed when the interval reaches twenty-four hours—probably because sleep,

By learning to read, for example, we have acquired an abstract concept of each letter of the alphabet, which allows us to recognize it in all its disguises, as well as generate new versions:

Accept and correct mistakes. To update their mental models, our brain areas must exchange error messages. Error is therefore the very condition of learning. Let us not punish errors, but correct them quickly, by giving children detailed but stress-free feedback. According to the Education Endowment Foundation’s synthesis, the quality of the feedbac

flags everything we love, every stimulus we are “addicted to,” and signals to the rest of the brain that what we experience is positive and better than we expected.

Alerting, which indicates when to attend, and adapts our level of vigilance. Orienting, which signals what to attend to, and amplifies any object of interest. Executive attention, which decides how to process the attended information, selects the processes that are relevant to a given task, and controls their execution.

knowledge from its environment.